“Hopelessness can be overcome” said Jimmy Carter in 1992 Pfund lecture

April 14, 2011Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Osielski

Nearly twenty years ago, President Jimmy Carter delivered the LeRoy H. Pfund Lecture on February 24, 1992. The following article “President Carter urges Christians to compassion and action on behalf of others” by Margaret Irish documented the event and was featured in the April/May 1992 issue of the Wheaton Alumni magazine.

As a young person, Jimmy Carter had two ambitions. The first he accomplished when he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, becoming an officer in the Navy.

The second was to teach at a college or university. “Thanks to Ronald Reagan, I reached that ambition four years earlier than I’d anticipated,” Carter quipped, speaking to the packed house gathered in Edman Memorial Chapel for the LeRoy H. Pfund Lecture. His defeat in the 1980 election spelled the end of his presidency, but it gave him opportunities to serve that he would never have had if he had remained in office. And service, for Jimmy Carter, is more significant than his job title.

“The essence of Christianity, as described by Christ himself, is not preaching which is important hut is action on behalf of others,” Carter said. “Jesus reached out to the outcast, the despised, the people who were different. How do we translate that compassion into our own culture?” Carter emphasized that Christians must serve others and minister to their needs, rather than associating only with people like themselves.

He emphasized that much of the nation’s and the world’s suffering could be alleviated if its affluent citizens would more willingly share with those who had little or nothing. “The greatest discrimination today is that of rich people against poor people.”

The Carter Center at Emory University in Atlanta is one example of an institution whose purpose is to address the needs of the poor, the homeless, the illiterate, the sick, and the outcast both in the United States and abroad. Carter challenged his audience to find ways to make a difference in the lives of others, one at a time. He cited the Atlanta Project, which is coordinating efforts between private enterprise, businesses, churches and government agencies in the city of Atlanta to react to disadvantaged people. Individuals can make a difference, “adopting” those in need, getting to know them, taking them to the doctor, teaching them to read, or taking time to be available for a child at risk.

Carter also expressed his conviction that the United States, in its role as a superpower, should he addressing problems such as hunger, disease, war, and human rights abuses in the world, “Our country should he totally committed to peace, not war … we have a direct responsibility to use our influence, whatever it might he.” He mentioned the Carter Center’s work in these areas, monitoring world conflict, working to improve the health of children in the Third World, finding ways to alleviate hunger. He warned, “When we think we’ve got it made, and that we are particularly blessed because we deserve to be blessed, then we have abandoned a major part of the faith in Christ that we claim is a driving force in our lives.”

At a press conference preceding the lecture, President Carter responded to questions from both journalists and students. He said he is encouraged that the United States is urging new Middle East peace talks, but felt that final settlement at this time is unlikely. Carter considers the Democratic presidential candidates to be capable leaders who should not be characterized as political “lightweights.” He had no strong preference among them, he said, “but once we choose one, I will give him my support.” He also felt that the contenders are “fair game” for the press, which “has an obligation and a right to scrutinize their past actions and let the American people make a judgment.”

The key theme of this year’s Pfund Lecture became Carter’s message of action on behalf of others. Listeners heard it stressed repeatedly by a man intent on meeting the challenges of a needy world with hope, enthusiasm, and Christian commitment.

“Something can be done,” Carter said. “We can prove that hopelessness can be overcome. We can do it with justice, humility, service, compassion, love, and peace.”

———-
The Leroy H. Pfund Lectureship was established in 1987 by Mr. Fred Bostrom, Sr., in memory of his wife, Ragnhild; it was named for Coach Lee Pfund ’49, who served the College for more than 38 years, first as a coach and then as director of the alumni association. The lectureship brings to Wheaton College’s campus leaders of American political and public life to enhance the students’ awareness of public Policies, issues, and views, and offer them a broad range of perspectives. The 1992 Pfund Lecture brought former President Jimmy Carter to Wheaton.

The Wesley G. Pippert Papers in the Wheaton College Buswell Library Special Collections has a wealth of information about the former president. Wes Pippert came to Washington, D.C. in 1976 in order to cover Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign as the principal UPI reporter. Pippert followed Carter to the White House and was assigned there from 1977 to 1981. He also wrote “The Spiritual Journey of Jimmy Carter: In His Own Words” (1978).

LISTEN to President Carter’s 1992 Pfund lecture (mp3 – 01:04:09)

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Walter M. Dunnett

April 8, 2011Alumni, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Walter Dunnett reminisces in the December, 1966, Wheaton Alumni magazine.

It was the year 1946, and I was a student in the School of Commerce at Northwestern University. On occasion, seeing my fellow students who were enrolled in the School of Education, preparing for a career in the classroom, I sometimes found myself saying, “What a waste of time!” The next year I transferred to Wheaton, looking now toward a major in history, and undecided as to the future. Vividly I recall the experience – the Lord that year laid a burden upon me and called me to be, yes, a teacher! My whole perspective was changed and I could think of no other career.

I thank the Lord, too, for a number of deep spiritual experiences during my Wheaton years. There were, for example, the meetings with Dr. Harry Hager, and with Mr. Stephen Olford, held in the Chapel during 1947-48; and the impact of the 1950 revival. What wonderful days those were, and they served to cement and clarify that intimate relationship with God which is so essential to any child of His. And then there was, of course, the intellectual stimulation of the classroom. Particularly through my capable instructors in History and Bible the Word of God became clearer, more meaningful and directive. I can only say it became a “new Book” during those days, a Book characterized by unity, by historical relevancy, by authority.

Now as I look back over 13 years in Bible school teaching, particularly in the field of New Testament studies, I voice thanks to God for the privilege of spending six years as a student at Wheaton. (It wasn’t that I was so terribly slow. It just took time to pick up three degrees: the A.B. in 1949; the A.M. in 1950; and the B.D. in 1953.) And a graduate fellowship granted me was, may I add, a wonderful preparation for teaching. When one has had devoted parents, a solid Christ-centered education, and a loving wife and family, what more could he ask? Now finishing up on a Ph.D degree, and teaching this year at Wheaton (1966-67), I am grateful for all this – and more.

On My Mind – Jill Baumgaertner

April 4, 2011Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of English and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner was featured in the Spring 1994 issue.

In 1980, after many years of “sanctified cool,” balancing tenuously the professional requirements of my degree program with my faith interests and questions, I found myself teaching at Wheaton in an environment that actually required me to make the connections between faith and learning which had been considered irrelevant in graduate school. Much to my surprise, in those early years at Wheaton, I discovered that in spite of my hard work at attempting to bring these portions of my life and thought together, Athens and Jerusalem did not unite spontaneously. The result was often a defensive posture about the spiritual integrity of my individual discipline.

I taught at Wheaton ten years before I began to integrate faith and learning in a way which was neither reductionistic nor so abstract as finally not to be integration at all. My eyes were opened in a seminar funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. The professor leading the seminar, a Jewish man attracted to the writings of Luther, was the first person outside of the Wheaton community to challenge me to take my doctrinal beliefs seriously enough to allow them to direct my literary questions. What was different about his approach? What I learned from him was that true integration might seem on the surface to be merely the integration of beliefs with biblical, doctrinal, and literary texts, but it is also, for the Christian scholar, a slippery and dislocating spiritual experience, leading often to questions that propositional language cannot answer.

Only when I began to study the complex network of relationships between and within the academic disciplines and the arts did I discover the way to begin to combine my thinking and my believing. To put it simply, the integration of faith and learning is, finally, a profoundly interdisciplinary task. College professors are primarily specialists; few are trained across disciplines. Thus I began to understand my earlier frustrations as symptoms of a problem that plagues the entire academic world, not just Wheaton. We have all been locked into our narrow areas, and we have been living under the illusion that these small spaces are complete microcosms. The fact is that the imagination of the scholar has not been exercised in a wide enough arena.

Many of us who attended college as English majors in the 1960s have spent our literary lives trying to crawl out of the hole into which we were pushed– the hole that separated literary texts from historical, psychological, biographical, political, and theological contexts. Now that I have been freed, I am also wary of being sold into the slavery of current thinking that obliterates texts entirely. But that is another essay and material for future conversation.

My current interests put me in the general vicinity of, if not entirely within, the group of scholars called the New Historicists, primarily literary scholars who have rediscovered history and who are redefining the discipline of English studies. The New Historicists view literature as an arena for the play of political power, and their task is to reconstruct and rediscover the political subtexts of classic literary works and introduce other cultural artifacts as competing texts.

I will never be a true New Historicist because I believe that imaginative literature has a special place in the humanities. I believe, for example, that poetry contains truth in a way that philosophy or history or theology cannot. But I must admit that the exposure to the methods and approaches of New Historicism has changed my teaching. My Renaissance literature class, for example, now contains, in addition to poetry, stories, and plays by Spenser, More, Shakespeare, Sydney, Wyatt, and Kyd, readings from Luther’s letters and essays, Margaret More Roper’s letters and translations of Erasmus, Elizabeth I’s speeches, selections from Calvin’s Institutes, and a treatise on education written by Ascham. I am now much more concerned about teaching literature in the context of the cultures that created it. I believe that this is the future direction of literary studies.

———-

Jill Baumgaertner received a bachelor’s degree from Emory in 1968, a master’s from Drake in 1969, and a doctorate from Emory in 1980. She previously taught at Valparaiso University and joined the Wheaton faculty in 1980. She is the author of Finding Cuba (Chimney Hill Press, 2001), a collection of poems that explores her Cuban ancestry, and three poetry chapbooks:Leaving Eden (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1995), Namings (Franciscan University Press, 1999), and My Father’s Bones (Finishing Line Press, 2006). She has also written a textbook/anthology, Poetry (Harcourt Brace, 1990); and Flannery O’Connor: A Proper Scaring (Cornerstone Press, 1998). She was a Fulbright fellow to Spain, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the White Eagle Coffee Store Press’s poetry chapbook contest, the Goodman Award in Poetry, an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Illinois Prize of the Rock River Poetry Contest, and the CCL Midwest Poetry Contest. She serves as poetry editor of The Christian Century and is past president of the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Play Ball!!

March 31, 2011College-related Publications, Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Malone

Late March and the first days of April have traditionally been the start of baseball season and this year is no different. Today marks, for some, the start of time, especially as life re-emerges from the slumber of winter. As W.P. Kinsella wrote in Shoeless Joe (later turned into the successful film Field of Dreams), “…the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.”

One of the items that was, for all intents and purposes, erased from the memory of Wheaton College was a small little notebook in the Charles Blanchard papers. As the Archives & Special Collections has moved the descriptive information about its holdings into an archival management system (archon.wheaton.edu) staff have been reviewing box inventories and the contents of collections. One of the items that emerged was a scrapbook of clippings. Listed under “General Files” this little notebook turned out to have started out life as a baseball scorebook, circa 1868-1869, from the earliest decades of American baseball. 1869 was the year that saw America’s first professional baseball team, The Cincinnati Red Stockings. This scorebook was hidden away under pasted clippings with titles like “Temperance,” “Oddfellowship,” “The Fifteenth Amendment,” “The British Question” and many more.

The obscured pages have yet to be fully revealed, due to the pasted articles, but what is easily found are some of the names of the players, the positions they played and the statistics gathered for inning by inning action. The style of the statistics follows an older “box score” format that more resembled Cricket scoring that kept track of O-s and R-s, or, the number of “putouts” and “runs.” The statistics show a very different game than we see today as players, like Blanchard, are listed as scoring ten runs in a game with final scores of 53 to 29 not out of the ordinary.

In the roster section Charles Blanchard’s name appears numerous times and on one occasion we see that he manned second base. Other names that appear on the roster are Sox (a fitting name for baseball), Ramsey, Fischer, Hiatt and Bliss. Another name that appears, and has appeared in this blog before, is that of “Hemingway.” Since the earliest clippings in the notebook date from 1868, the year following the last known date of Anson Hemingway’s attendance at Wheaton, we can properly assume that the baseball player is the paternal grandfather of noted American author Ernest Hemingway. The younger Hemingway loved baseball as well and while living in Cuba erected a field and gathered local boys for two teams to whom he’d pitch. In this early baseball scorebook we see that the elder Hemingway, who later went on to work for the YMCA in Chicago, played third base.

In America professional baseball is nearing its sesquicentennial and amateur play is older than that. For decades each spring has brought forth flowering bulbs and hopes for a pennant. In Chicago, for Cubs fans at least, that hope, according to Alexander Pope, springs eternal. Maybe this is the year?

One could say that baseball keeps one young. Below is a photograph of Charles Blanchard at a ripe old of 72 years old giving it one more swing!

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Paul E. Adolph, M.D.

March 28, 2011Alumni, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Dr. Paul E. Adolph ’23 expresses appreciation for his alma mater, published in the July/August, 1966, Wheaton Alumni magazine.

Born in Philadelphia soon after the slaughter of many missionaries in China during the Boxer uprising at the turn of the century, my devout Christian parents unostentatiously promised me to the Lord as a future missionary to China. This promise was not revealed to me until the eve of my departure for China as a missionary many years later.

In the meantime, as a high school lad of 14 years of age, I had heard and responded with a promise on my own part to the Lord’s call to me to be a medical missionary in China. After preliminary training at a Bible institute, I went to college at a university which I discovered to my dismay was agnostic and even intellectually dishonest in its perspective. Attending summer school at a Bible institute after my second year of college work at this university, I was intrigued by one of the courses entitled “Fish University” which proved to be an exposition of the book of Jonah taught by Dr. Charles A. Blanchard, who was then president of Wheaton College. Desire to attend Wheaton was kindled.

As I prayed for guidance, the Lord opened the way for me to go to Wheaton College that fall, despite the fact that it meant relinquishing the scholarship aid which as mine at the university. Here at Wheaton College in my next two years, I found the intellectual honesty and warm Christian fellowship through which my premedical studies were successfully completed and my faith was deepened and strengthened for the ministry to which the Lord had called me. Then, after four years of medical school and subsequent hospital internship and residency, I went to China as a medical missionary under the China Inland Mission. There I was assigned to a hospital which had been closed for 17 years while awaiting a doctor to come; i.e., ever since the call be be a medical missionary had come to me as a high school lad. I sometimes shudder to think of what a blessing I would have missed if I had not been obedient to that heavenly vision. Many fruitful years of Christian service, chiefly as a surgeon (having become a fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1944) have followed: 1) in China for 15 years 2) in the US Army medical corps in USA and Europe for four years, which included a weekly Bible class in the Epistle of the Romans for Army personnel in Verdun, France 3) in Kentucky for one year, and 4) in the medical screening of missionary candidates and medical care of furloughed missionaries in Chicago the past 15 years.

One of my joys in later years has been that of seeing my two sons prepared and equipped by Wheaton College for missionary careers. Harold ’54 (MD U of PA ’58 and certified by the American Board of Surgery in ’65) is now under appointment to go soon with his family to Ethiopia under the Sudan Interior Mission. Robert ’58 (medical technologist – ASCP ’60) is currently serving with his family in East Pakistan under the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. I thank God for Wheaton College and what she has done for my family and me.

On My Mind – Mary Hopper

March 25, 2011College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Conducting Mary Hopper was featured in the Spring 1993 issue.

As I was driving to the College one day last fall, I tuned in to the public radio station. A discussion of women’s issues was in progress, and I found myself in total agreement with the speaker as she described the strides and setbacks women have made in the professional world.

Then she made a statement to the effect that the entire future of women’s rights hinged on the abortion issue, If anyone was watching me as I drove along Harrison Street, they would have been amazed to see me, first nodding in agreement, and then, suddenly, furiously shaking my head.

During the political campaign last year, I became quite distressed over the discussions that polarized the right-wing expression of “family values” and the left-wing advocacy of pro-choice. This reasoning appeared to provide only two alternatives for women: either to choose a traditional, early twentieth century female role, or to become “pro-choice/liberal” career women.

Where does this leave single women, single-parent families, couples unable to have children, and women who honestly seek to develop the gifts that God has bestowed upon them in addition to those of being wives and mothers? How many women in our country work because they have to support a family? How is a woman to function in her family?

There are many questions about the role of women in society. As a working mother myself, I struggle with such issues every day. It is not surprising that many Christian women today wonder with uncertainty about their future.

Two years ago, I taught a student who decided to leave Wheaton because her goal in life was to be a housewife and mother, and she didn’t want to work as hard to get her college degree as she would have to work at Wheaton. She was a very bright and gifted young musician with great potential for teaching. Her mind was made up, but in counseling with her, I shared my perceptions about her decision. I told her about some of my friends’ marriages, which were unhappy or had ended in divorce because both partners were not devoted to the full development of their talents. Having been single myself for quite a few years, I pointed out to her that not everyone is destined for marriage. I challenged her not to throw away her gifts merely because she was waiting for the right relationship to come along.

At Wheaton, many women are role models for our young women–they may he single; married, with or without families; at different stages of their lives; and working in almost any area of the College. I have come to realize that part of my calling to teach at Wheaton is to try to live as a woman devoted to serving Christ through her profession, her marriage, and her family.

Another part of my role as a professor is to help my students recognize and develop their gifts. In the parable of the talents, Jesus exhorts us all to develop the gifts that have been given to us, not to bury them. Many of our young women are surprised to learn that they have anything to contribute. Some live with such insecurity that it is a major revelation to them to think that they can he competent conductors, or teach music lessons, or acquire the self-confidence to perform.

I rejoice when I think of women I have taught working in the business world, in education, on the mission field, in graduate school, and in their homes. I am thankful for the small part I have been able to play in their development during the years they spent at Wheaton College.

My prayer is that Wheaton will continue to provide role models of many kinds for our students, whether those role models are trustees, faculty, staff, or administrators. It should he apparent to our students that we are all concerned about our personal lives as well as our professional lives. And it should be clear to our students that we care about them, as we push them to achieve the most they can during their years at Wheaton.

Ultimately, the measure of our success as educators and as mentors is the degree to which they learn to serve the Lord with their whole being in the exercise of their talents and skills, as well as in their attention to their roles as men and women.

———-

Mary Hopper is Professor of Choral Music and Conducting at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. She also conducts both the Men’s Glee Club and the Women’s Chorale and has toured nationally and internationally with both ensembles to great success. She holds degrees from Wheaton College and the University of Iowa, where she studied with Don V. Moses. Before coming to Wheaton, Dr. Hopper taught public school music in the Chicago area, and choral conducting and voice at the University of Minnesota (Morris). Her ensembles frequently appear at conventions of the ACDA, most recently, the Women’s Chorale at the National Convention in New York City, February 2003. The Men’s Glee Club will appear at the Illinois ACDA Convention in October, 2008. Dr. Hopper is in demand nationally as a guest conductor and clinician. During the 2007-08 academic year she conducted the Illinois and Louisiana All-State Choirs. She has served ACDA as Illinois State President and is presently ACDA Central Division President-Elect. In October 2010 she received the Distinguished Service to Alma Mater Award at Homecoming.

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Herb Jauchen

March 18, 2011Alumni, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

This remembrance by Herb Jauchen ’40 is the first in a series published by Wheaton College Alumni magazine, beginning January, 1966. He served as Vice President of Westmont College and Vice President of advertising for Christian Life Publications. Previously he had managed department stores in Oregon for 13 years, following five years in the US Army during WW II. For two years, 1969-70, he was the Wheaton National Alumni Fund Chairman.

While many rightfully attribute their current successful positions to praying mothers, fathers, parents or Christian homes, the Lord knows I must honestly attribute all of my present blessings to the life He began and shaped for me during four years at Wheaton College, made possible by the faithfulness and dedication of the college family unto God. Those were the lean, post-depression years of the late ’30s, and many of us at that time (interestingly, including most of the then-struggling varsity teams) knew what 40-50-hour work weeks meant, along with tiring practices and full academic schedules.

From the beginning, for me, a young man without a home, who even then already had seen much of life in the raw, Wheaton quickly became my home. It began with the warm welcome of upperclassmen like Dayton Roberts, Roger McShane and Bob Lazear and ended, physically, after four years of warm friendship and acceptance by a host of faculty, administration and students alike – four of the happiest and most memorable years of my life. The most important event of those years of many recognitions and awards, however, was the joy, late in Junior year, along with the girl who later became my wife, Joanna Cochran, of being introduced to and receiving Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Strangely, I had been at Wheaton nearly three full years before anyone personally and individually explained Jesus Christ to me. Late one May evening, the faithfulness of Evan Welsh was again used of God, as it has been innumerable times before and since, in leading Joanna and me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our lives were completely changed from that time on. Yes, above all, Wheaton College was used not only to lead me into the Christian life but also to give me a wonderful, God-honoring wife and mother of our five children, was well as a sound Christian and academic education. In addition, Wheaton has given me true and tested friends from both faculty, administration and student body alike – V.R. Edman, K.B. Tiffany, Ed Coray, Don Kennedy, Manly Wilcox and many others – who have continued faithful through the years, even as they were during often-difficult undergraduate days.

Almost daily, also, in some 25 years of military, business and Christian service experience, has come to mind and use some of the rich lessons of life first learned in the classrooms, athletic events and campus activities of college days. For truly God has been good in giving knowledge and wisdom to raise up a Christian home and family, following His precepts and playing according to the rules of the game both in home and business. Never having had a Christian home before attending Wheaton, it is thrilling to see my children enjoy the benefits of lessons first taught me there. Recently, my 19-year-old son John wrote that he had just realized my own ultimate success would be measured by the success of my children, above all, spiritually. It was especially gratifying to have that letter come from Wheaton, where he is now in his second year, earning his own way also, by choice, and already learning many more of life’s rich lessons that can be so well learned there. It is our prayer that his younger brothers and sisters also will be able to attend Wheaton and continue on to the mission field, even as John and his older sister Jan are presently planning to do.

The theme of the Wheaton Centennial was the faithfulness of Wheaton to the cause of Christ. I thank God for that faithfulness – of its founders, its faculty, administration, and alumni – not only through past years, but also today, in this era of intellectual unrest, and I pray what will be tomorrow should our Lord tarry. Only by this continuing faithfulness, which has done so much for me, can my children and thousands of other children who will attend Wheaton in the years ahead have the opportunity of being blessed and privileged in beginning life’s journey on their own on sound Christian principles, precepts and learning – for His honor and His glory.

On My Mind – Richard Butman

March 16, 2011College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Psychology Richard Butman was featured in the Winter 1992 issue.

One of the most satisfying and stimulating aspects of my job at Wheaton is the opportunity to travel in this country and abroad. Most recently, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on “Power Within Diversity: Confronting Moral Issues in a Multi-Racial/Multi-Cultural Community and World.” Several hundred participants met for four days on the University of Toronto campus in an effort to facilitate dialogue and discussion about those differences and their implications for moral education. That interaction was strongly influenced by the setting of the conference, According to the United Nations, Toronto is now the most culturally and racially diverse city in the world.

One of the greatest challenges facing Wheaton today is how best to come to grips with the increasing pluralism of contemporary society. Few would doubt that we need to be more multi-cultural/ international in our concerns and consciousness than we are at the present. The debate is over how best to become more intentional about that diversity in all aspects of our college life. In short, how do we best equip ourselves to act responsibly as Christians in a pluralistic society where justice for all faiths must be maintained? Put succinctly, this is the challenge of pluralism.

Christian philosopher and ethicist Richard J. Mouw has just written a wonderfully helpful book on the subject called Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (InterVarsity, 1992). He argues that dialogue and discussion are not facilitated when we become extremely dogmatic and rigid (i.e., too much “conviction”) or overly accommodating (i.e., “civility” to the point of advocating relativism). What he does advocate is a kind of “convicted civility,” a humility that doesn’t let our religious fervor blind us to our own humanity or that of the persons with whom we disagree.

An emphasis on personal piety and evangelism has been a rich part of Wheaton’s heritage. In recent decades, that has been increasingly linked to helping the student develop a Christian world-and-life-view. Perhaps the most difficult task we face today is to find ways to equip and motivate students to find distinctively and decidedly Christian ways of being and acting in the world-at-large.

Few of us lack strong convictions at Wheaton. Perhaps where we need to stretch is in the direction of greater civility and humility. For a community that strives to serve the church and society-at-large, we need to be especially sensitive to how we define what it really means to be a Christian in contemporary society. Consider the words of Wheaton alumnus Horace L. Fenton ’32, D.D. ’61:

“We mean to proclaim, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ But what we often say is, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and accept our cultural patterns, our economic, political, and social outlook, our views of baptism and the Holy Spirit, our interpretation of prophecy, our organizational relationships –and thou shalt be saved” (taken from The Trouble with Barnacles, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 14).

We need to be careful about giving to cultural or social convictions the same standing as truths we have received from divine revelation. Fenton goes on to argue that “If the sin of liberalism is to subtract from the revelation of God, it may well be that the sin of evangelicals is too often an unwitting attempt to add to it” (p. 15). Surely efforts to diversify or internationalize our environment at Wheaton will be thwarted if we add to the revelation of God by too deeply embracing a “cultural style” that expects–or even demands–conformity “for the sake of unity.”

I am not advocating that we cower in timid silence in our increasingly pluralistic society. I do believe it is possible–but never easy–to be both faithful to the Word and respectful of others. If we seriously commit ourselves to exploring that “power within diversity,” I suspect we will learn that the church is vastly larger and richer than we ever dreamed.

———-
Richard E. Butman has taught courses in psychological assessment, psychopathology, psychotherapy, and the psychology of religion at Wheaton since 1980. He received his B.A. in psychology and his M.A. in theological studies from Wheaton and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is a licensed psychologist in Illinois. His clinical and research interests include the impact of fathers on their children across the lifespan, psychosocial development in young adulthood, and the assessment of religiosity. He was named Junior Teacher of the Year for 1988-89. His current interests include bereavement and psychopathology. He is currently working on collaborative projects in both areas. His commitment to promoting holistic development has lead to direct involvement in ministries in Africa, Asia, Chicago, and Latin America. Dr. Butman has co-authored (with Stanton L. Jones) Modern Psychotherapies: A Christian Appraisal (InterVarsity,1991) and (with Barrett McRay and Mark Yarhouse) Modern Psychopathologies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal (Intervarsity, 2005). A second edition of Modern Psychotherapies: A Christian Appraisal is currently being written with an anticipated release in 2011. Dr. Butman is also involved in a shared project in the areas of integration and the spiritual/sociocultural foundations of mental health.

ReCollections

Re-telling stories from Buswell Library Special Collections

“Hopelessness can be overcome” said Jimmy Carter in 1992 Pfund lecture

On My Mind – Jill Baumgaertner

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Paul E. Adolph, M.D.